Pollinator poetics: writing workshop with Mary Newell and A. Anupama

In this outdoor writing and/or drawing workshop, participants can explore spaces including pollinator-friendly gardens, open woods, flowing creek, labyrinth, and a quiet nook in a witch-hazel grove.

Try out different perspectives to decenter your view from an assumption of human primacy. How can we receive impressions of nature as an ever-adapting complex of life-forms interacting with each other and with non-animate components of the environment? How can we combine our knowledge with the felt experience of a terrain? We can explore writing from factual knowledge (e.g., knowledge of bee’s vision, mapping areas) as well as writing from not knowing and learning in process of interacting. We will discuss and share works-in-progress, and talk about opportunities for eco-poetics publication.

The workshop will be held in Mary Newell's historic property in Garrison, New York, weather permitting. Proof of Covid19 vaccination is required for participation in this event.

About the facilitators:
Mary Newell authored the poetry chapbooks RE-SURGE and TILT/ HOVER/ VEER as well as poems in journals, essays, and ecocritical encyclopedia entries on Whitman and Dickinson. She is co-editor of Poetics for the More-than-Human-World: An Anthology of Poetry and Commentary. A former Assistant Professor, she curates the Hudson Highlands Poetry Series. Newell is also a certified practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education and a dedicated gardener focusing on natives and pollinator-supporting species. https://manitoulive.wixsite.com/maryn

A. Anupama is a Tamil-American poet, visual artist and translator whose work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Tupelo Quarterly, Numéro Cinq, and elsewhere. Her new poetry chapbook, Saffron Threaded, is available from Dancing Girl Press. Anupama lives with her family in Upper Nyack, New York. More about her at aanupama.com.